Takes notes! CC in Iran!
Where were you on Monday, Oct. 19, 1987?
Today is the first time since 2009 that October 19 has fallen on a Monday, and that has me thinking about that day.
For you youngsters, that is the day better known as Black Monday, when the stock market plunged 508 points in a single session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 22.6 percent, the worst daily percentage loss on record, closing at 1,738.74.
The New York Times front page headline the next day asked, “Does 1987 Equal 1929?”
Anyone working on Wall Street today who is under 40 is unlikely to have any professional memories of the event. To you, I suggest reading “Black Monday: The Stock Market Catastrophe of October 19, 1987” by Tim Metz. It is the definitive account of the crash, including the key players, personalities, decisions, news flows and first-hand accounts of what happened that day.
Trend-following investment strategies-a computer-based way of trading that has become a major force in some markets-have gone from bullish to bearish to a degree not seen in a decade, according to AlphaSimplex Group.
The WSJ writes about how algos are an increasingly big part of investment decisions and that they’re still uniformly bearish.
I’m skeptical of this kind of thing, because how is AlphaSimplex Group supposed to know what the algos at Renaissance or Bridgewater are doing? At best, they’re guessing.
